


baby, in your kingdom

by scully_dubois



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, but actually really angsty oops, for valentine's day <3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29412021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scully_dubois/pseuds/scully_dubois
Summary: Mulder proposes to Scully during the Requiem bed scene.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 9
Kudos: 65





	baby, in your kingdom

**Author's Note:**

> my hand's been in the government too many years now...
> 
> (from baby, in your kingdom by valley maker)

He needs to tell her one thing and ask her another. Should be simple enough, except it never is when it comes to words passing between them. It's in both their natures to leave the sweetest sentiments unsaid lest they lose their luster when voice meets air. And what he has in mind is not exactly the easiest of utterances, neither the former nor the latter. One is the kind of admittance we fear when the phone rings unexpectedly, the other a declaration the unluckiest people go to their graves without getting. Delivering both at the same time is a sin if he’s ever committed one. And for once, he cares what count God has against him.  _ What if he isn’t able to see her again, even in the afterlife?  _

He’s been weighing one decision for awhile, looking for the balance between his conviction and her virtue. He could have done it when she came back to him with her baby-faced blush, accepting the cross he clung to in lieu of her. Or when she showed him the x-rays, and they spelled out  _ no hope. _ When he cried by her bedside and she didn’t stir--he could have done it then, she wouldn’t have known. But it means nothing unless it means everything to both of them, and she wouldn’t have--no, couldn’t have--given him the answer he wants back then. He holds this as the sacred truth that governed him then and will govern him now. He has no room for regrets.

The scuff of their shoes against the baseball diamond was the first time he realized that maybe,  _ maybe _ this manic impulse of his had some basis in reality. Not a solid one, nothing they could cross a canyon with, but in time…

And then he was inside her brain, privy to her thoughts, and what was an unsound bridge had become a stairway to Heaven only they could climb. Fuck a safety net, he wouldn’t be needing that anymore.

Then he got the call from Billy Miles, and he thought of her ouroboros, and isn’t that what they’ve been doing this whole time?  _ Circling some greater truth that they’ve always known?  _

Every circle ends where it begins and begins where it ended. This is what he’s thinking when he spots Billy’s badge, and they glide over the X he painted when they didn’t yet trust each other (but so badly wanted to), and when he lays eyes on Teresa Nemmans and she is not Nemmans but Hoese, and there is a child in her arms. 

Seven years.  _ And what do they have to show for it? _ What they mean to each other has changed, but it’s not like anyone can tell. He called Scully his partner then, and he calls her his partner now.  _ Oh, the time they have wasted. _

But it will be wasted no more. Seeing her with the Hoese baby, cooing a lullaby into its precious ear…seven years ago, he told her of the government’s conspiracy and how nothing else mattered to him. That is no longer the truth.

There is a truth they both know that is stronger than anything. When she appears at his door, flushed and shivering like a puppy left out in the cold, his head and his heart finally hit the same wavelength. He will shy away from fate no longer.

She doesn’t wait to be invited in, she knows his bed is hers for the taking. He lifts her shoes off her feet like he’s kneeling at an altar, wraps his arms around her as if it’s what he was put on this Earth to do. Contrary to popular belief, he has quite a reverence for domestic bliss. He’s been searching for it since his own reflection of it was shattered at twelve years old, and it has finally come to him. 

He is scared to death that he’ll fuck it up, but not so scared that he’ll back away. In other words, his approach to everything in his life. It occurs to him then, with his lips on her temple, that he would set his own flame to the office and every X-File in it if she asked him to.  _ If that’s what she wanted. _ He wouldn’t even have stepped foot back in that haunted place after its first burning if she’d given him an indication that it was not her desire.

“Scully,” he starts, nuzzling her neck, “I was thinking about when you asked me if I ever wanted to stop...if I ever wanted to get out of the car.”

“Uh-huh,” she breathes so faintly that he wouldn’t have known if he hadn’t felt it in her lungs. 

“Well, I do want that. I’ve always wanted that. Remember when we were in Home and I said I’d like to settle someplace like that?”

Scully chuckles against him.

“Obviously not  _ in _ Home, but you know, some place with the small-town sentiment without the, uh, familial connection.”

“Mm-hm,” Scully murmurs, sensing a larger point that he has strayed from.

“I just never knew how to get to it--I never thought that I  _ could _ get to it, because I grew up thinking my parents had that, and then I saw they never did at all.”

Scully tucks his open palm under her chin, listening contentedly. 

“So I spent my time chasing apparitions,” he continues, “things I couldn’t see, because I stopped believing in the things that I could. It’s like…the invisible things could surpass my expectations easily, but the visible ones could only disappoint.”

Scully feels cocooned, protected, and  _ warm. _ She latches her attention to Mulder’s voice to keep from drifting off, kissing his knuckle to show that she’s listening.

“And I’ve realized, Scully,” he says, an edge in his voice, “that it’s a fucking waste of time to live like that. Like doing laps on a lazy susan and wondering why you’re never getting anywhere.” 

“I know,” Scully says, her voice quiet but certain. 

Mulder laughs lightly. “I know you do, that’s what you’ve been saying all this time...I just didn’t see it before.” He kisses her shoulder, lingering in the final moments before doing what cannot be undone. “And so I have something to ask you, but there’s something I have to tell you first.” Rawness permeates his voice. 

At the sound of this, Scully cranes her neck, her gaze falling upon his face for the first time since they laid down. She can barely see his hazel irises through the reflecting pool in his eyes. 

“What is it, Mulder?” she asks, concern pressing up against her urgent need to know.

He closes his eyes, the sight of her too much for him in this moment. What he wouldn’t give to feel like he could live with himself if he kept this a secret.

“I’ve seen a neurologist, I’ve had MRIs, it’s all conclusive. My brain is diseased from whatever Cigarette Smoking Man did to me. Fatal, my neurologist says.”

“ _ Mulder… _ ” Scully sits up, her whole being gravitating toward him. She runs her fingers along the space where she knows he bears his scar. 

“Who told you this? And when? Have you had symptoms…?”

Clearly, she does not want to believe him, and he understands.

“I’ve been going back and forth to appointments for a few weeks. It was just confirmed the other day, I didn’t want to worry you until I knew more.”

“And your symptoms?” 

He recognizes the darkness in her eyes and pucker in her forehead that forewarns tears. “Disorientation, dizziness, memory loss...sometimes I feel like I sleepwalked right through my day. “

‘Why didn’t you tell me?” her voice crackles.

He kisses her hand. “I thought you might go to some dark places if you tried to diagnose me.”

“Well, you’ve just turned the lights out on me with no warning!”

“ _ Shit. _ I’m sorry, I’m sorry...I didn’t know how best to approach it, I just knew I wanted to cause you the least pain possible.”

“You wanted it to be nothing so you wouldn’t have to tell me,” she notes, not accusing, just speaking plainly.

“Well, yes. That would have been ideal.”

She swallows back tears, wrapping her arms around his neck with grave sincerity. “But now I’m here to fight right alongside you.”

This is what they do--have done, for years. Make his pain her pain and vice versa. Hurt hurts less when shared.

Mulder pulls away first, and it feels like peeling off a layer of his skin. Still, this is as necessary as anything he has ever known. 

“That’s why I was wondering--and listening to it now, I realize this is probably the most selfish thing I’ve ever done, but I don’t know, I thought you might understand...will you marry me, Scully?”

Her breath catches and before she can think of anything else, she is careening toward his t-shirt to cover her tears. She clutches at the material, pulling it from his midsection to her face.

As far as Mulder’s concerned, there’s an elephant stuck in his throat. “I really don’t know what that means,” he stammers.

Scully lets him see her, tear-stained skin and all. “Yes, Mulder, my god yes! Do you honestly think I’d say no to you?”

“I would, especially in this situation.” 

It’s a classic Mulder comment, but Scully’s not laughing. She pulls him in again, just wanting to feel his skin against hers. Their breaths slow in time with each other’s, their heartbeats matching pace. Scully’s lips brush his mole.

She speaks into his skin. “You saved me when it was impossible. I will do the same for you.”

Mulder thought he might hold it together until those words slipped from her lips. The elephant in his throat turns to stifled sobs. 

With silent tears still streaking down her cheeks, Scully runs her thumbs along his lips. Just as she did when they thought his brain was getting better. The love in her eyes is equal to then too.

“My constant, my touchstone, remember?” she professes. “Then, now, and always.” She presses her lips to his forehead, and he thinks she must be healing him.


End file.
